A Method for Selecting and Posturing Digital Human Models
Open Access
- Author:
- Spece, Hannah
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Matthew B Parkinson, Thesis Supervisor
Domenic Adam Santavicca, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Digital Human Models
Posture
Engineering Design
Virtual Fitting
Design for Human Variability
Anthropometry - Abstract:
- Digital human modeling is a powerful tool for the design of artifacts, tasks, and environments. The correct use of 3-D human models in engineering design can greatly reduce time and costs in the product development process and allow for proactive design analysis. Their effectiveness as design tools relies on proper posturing, which must realistically represent the interaction between users' bodies and their environment. This thesis aims to assist designers by qualitatively and quantitatively de fining a wide range of body and hand postures. A uniform set of joint angles is provided for each in both the saggital and frontal body planes to aid designers in postural analysis. Considerations like physiological constraints, safety, and user comfort further describe the postures and help designers choose the correct positioning for their DHM. This thesis also proposes a deterministic method for successfully creating and using DHMs as design tools. It leads the user through four steps of choosing a DHM bases on target demographics, selecting and modeling a posture, validating the model, and creating a family of DHMs with variable anthropometry. This method prepares designers for further analysis of human factors such as fi t, reach, comfort, visibility, and balance.